Four Methods for Habit Formation 🧠

Easy ways to support your brain in developing new habits...

If you’ve tried to develop new habits (at the start of a new year, perhaps?) and found yourself struggling and falling off…you’re in good company.

Developing new habits as an adult can be difficult. This is in thanks, mostly, to a process called synaptic pruning, in which our brain removes “pathways” that we don’t use that often and strengthens the ones we regularly rely on. If you feel “stuck in your ways”, you can thank your ol’ brain for that!

It helps me to visualize this like a landscape filled with lots of hiking paths and trails. Something like this:

You can see that there are paths that are really well worn. They stand out against the grass. Then there are other paths that are not as well-worn. They are quite a bit lighter, still have some spots that are overgrown with grass or areas where the path kind of disappears. And there are also areas where the path is barely visible – it’s like a person has passed through only a handful of times.

These paths are like the neural pathways in our brain. And it is our brain's job to conserve energy and make us as efficient as possible. Therefore, our brain will instinctively revert to choosing those paths that are well-worn.

That resistance we feel when we are trying to change our behavior, habits, or routines is our brain telling us “Hey! Why are we taking this rugged path when we have this smooth, paved one we’ve taken a hundred times!?” And it will try to guide us toward that path of least resistance (literally!).

If we can push through that initial resistance, and get our brain to chose that “rugged” path a few more times, it will eventually become a well-worn path just like the others.

Methods for habit formation can help us hack this process and make it easier to establish new neural pathways (aka new behaviors, habits, and routines). There are many methods out there, but these are four I’ve found the most impactful:

Habit Stacking

🤓What it is: Habit stacking is the act of creating a new habit by connecting it to a strong, existing habit.

👊🏻How to Do It: Find a habit you already perform regularly (like brushing your teeth, making coffee, commuting to work) and “stack” a new habit onto it.

👀Example: “After I brush my teeth in the morning (old habit) I will do a quick 3-minute cleaning of the bathroom (new habit)”.

🛣 Path Analogy: Habit stacking would be like getting on that well-worn hiking trail, but when you reach the end you just keep plowing forward through the knee-high grass and extend the path a little further.

Temptation Bundling

🤓 What it is: Temptation Bundling is the act of linking an action you want to do with an action you need to do.

👊🏻 How to Do It: Think of a temptation (aka guilty pleasures!) or something you really enjoy doing, and only do it when you are also doing the habit or behavior you’re trying to develop.

👀 Example: You want to do the dishes each night after dinner instead of letting them pile up: Only listen to your favorite podcast (temptation) while washing the dishes after dinner each night (new habit).

🛣 Path Analogy: Temptation Bundling would be like taking a casual stroll on your favorite, most scenic path — but a few yards in you veer left, create a little loop, and then come back to the path you’re familiar with.

Gateway Habit

🤓 What it is: A Gateway Habit is a small habit that naturally leads into a larger behavior or habit.

👊🏻 How to Do It: Identify a small action that would put you on the “path” toward the habit you want to develop.

👀 Examples: You want to drink less alcohol on nights out (habit you want to develop): make your first beverage of the night something N/A (gatway habit). Next week, make your first two drinks N/A, etc.

🛣 Path Analogy: A Gateway Habit would be like finding a very rugged, underdeveloped path and proceeding just a yard or two down it — stomping the grass down as much as you can, then turning around to go back where you came from. The next day, you’d go a little further…and a little further the next day.

Environment Design

🤓 What it is: Environment Design is creating an environment that favors the habit that you’re trying to build.

👊🏻 How to Do It: Set up your space in a way that helps trigger the new habits and lowers the resistance.

👀 Examples: If you want to apply eye cream each night, store it in the same place as your toothbrush so your environment is set up to trigger and nurture that new habit.

🛣 Path Analogy: Environment Design is like having a new hiking path you want to develop, and instead of going at it alone, you spend some time hauling in shovels, rakes, and gravel so that it’s much faster to get that path worn down.

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And there you have it! I hope this visual of the hiking paths pops into your head when you feel that resistance, and makes it a bit easier to develop the habits you are working toward. It’s been a game-changer for me over the years.

I’m keeping my writing free and open to all. But if you enjoyed this, please take a moment to tap the 🧡 at the top or bottom of the post. Thank you!

💬 Have you tried any of the methods I mentioned? Or found other habit formation methods that work well for you? I’d love to hear about them, so pop over to the comments section.

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